Business model / Oakley Capital

The Oakley difference

OCI’s Investment Adviser is Oakley Capital, a pan-European private equity firm, which specialises in investing in and developing fast-growing companies across four sectors – Technology, Consumer, Education and Business Services.

The Oakley difference

Deal origination

Oakley’s success is built on its network of entrepreneurs, many of whom it has backed on multiple deals, and who go on to invest in the Oakley Funds and introduce new opportunities.

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Our entrepreneurial DNA means we are the partner of choice for entrepreneurs: we empathise with founders; we understand their mindset; we anticipate their priorities and concerns.

Value creation

Oakley’s Investment Team works closely with founders and management teams to create sustainable value through M&A, performance improvement, business transformation and ESG integration.

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Our tech-enabled portfolio and our focus on sticky, recurring revenues provide valuable income visibility and predictability, which further underpin the valuations of our companies.

The Oakley difference / Strong focus on four sectors with underlying growth drivers

Technology ​​​​

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Business migration to the cloud
Companies looking to deliver efficiency and productivity gains through digitisation.

Consumer ​​

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Woman exercising at home

Consumer shift to online
Several regions and sectors are ripe for digital disruption.

Education ​​

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Woman taking notes while looking at website on computer

Growing global demand for high-quality accessible learning
Online platforms and market consolidation are delivering provision at scale.

Business Services ​​

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Technician working on computer while on board a ship

Providing mission-critical tech-enabled services
Help businesses succeed in an increasingly complex, data-driven economy.

Drawn bracket connecting four sectors – Technology, Consumer, Education and Business Services to a stat for total invested in millions

Total invested in 2023

£175m

The Oakley difference / A differentiated deal-sourcing network

Business founder network

Oakley’s business founder network provides privileged access to off-market opportunities and creates frequent repeat partnerships.

Navigating complexity

Successful track record of navigating complexity across multiple dimensions: carve-outs, founder-led and complex stakeholder management.

Drawn bracket connecting to two stats – primary and uncontested deals

90%

Primary deals since inception

>75%

Uncontested deals since inception

The Oakley difference / Proven value creation strategies

Oakley value creation strategy

1. Buy and build

Oakley provides the expertise and resources to help portfolio companies source and execute acquisitions. These include transformative deals that enable them to scale up quickly and expand into new products or markets, as well as roll-up strategies that add smaller acquisitions to a larger platform and enable consolidation in fragmented markets. To date, Oakley has supported its portfolio companies with over 165 bolt-on acquisitions.

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Oakley value creation strategy

2. Business transformation

Oakley works with management teams to leverage digital tools and skills in order to meaningfully enhance the way a company does business, from migrating its services online to launching new e-commerce channels. Improving the quality and predictability of earnings by shifting sales to a software as a service (SaaS) or recurring revenue model can have a meaningful impact on valuations. Today, over 70% of Oakley’s current portfolio is digital/tech-enabled.

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Oakley value creation strategy

3. Performance improvement

Oakley helps businesses reach their potential by deploying a range of tools to enhance their performance. Achieving marketing excellence is one effective method and the firm has deep experience working with portfolio companies to identify the optimal marketing channels that will help them to build their brand. Investment in marketing can be complemented with other performance enhancement tools, such as improving yield management and boosting cross-selling.

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Oakley value creation strategy

4. Talent acquisition

A key asset in any business is human capital, and Oakley helps portfolio companies attract and retain the best talent. In the case of corporate carve-outs, Oakley can assemble entire new management teams as well as recruit for critical roles such as sales, marketing, technology and finance. With founder-led businesses, Oakley will often strengthen management by building out a team to support entrepreneurs or formulating a succession plan.

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